Tag Archives: Bunica

The most memorable person we have met in Moldova, and the person we will miss the most after we return home this summer, is the 87-year-old grandmother, or bunica, of our host family.

Nadejda Ciornea inspires us.

She travels almost every day from our house in Ialoveni to downtown Chișinău, where she sells handicrafts in the outdoor market in the Arts Square. She walks up a steep hill to the bus stop, then boards an overcrowded vehicle before finally arriving near the market. There she sits outdoors on a folding chair, in the heat of the summer and the cold of the winter. Only rain or a snow storm keep her home.

Watching this small woman shuffle on the road with her cane, or greet customers in the market, never ceases to amaze us. When we ask why she continues to work at her age, she smiles and wags her finger, saying la lucru! (the work). In fact, she says this to us almost every day, teasing us that we need to work as hard as she does.

Every evening I ask her how business went that day. Often she says she earned nimic, or nothing, usually followed by some choice words about Moldova’s faltering economy. Sometimes she smiles and points to the small ledger she carries, where she records her sales. Occasionally she’ll share photos or letters from customers she’s met over the years who befriended her and sent her greetings.

In the evening, we sometimes share a glass of wine and a piece of cake, preceded by her toasting our good health and success. She asks about our family back home and what we did that day, always with a twinkle in her eye and a quick laugh.

Bunica’s daughter, Nina, is officially our “host mother,” and we’ve become very close to her, her husband Mihai and the rest of the Bordei family. Since we are a few years older than Nina, however, it’s Bunica who has felt like a mother while we’ve been in Moldova. Champa and I both lost our own mothers years ago. We never expected to find another here on this side of the world.

In the years ahead, whenever we feel like complaining about getting old, we will remember Bunica wagging her finger and saying la lucru! She has shown us how to age gracefully, embracing every day with what Moldovans call a suflet mare — a big soul.

Bunica said to me the other day that she will miss the two of us a lot after we depart in July. We will miss her even more.

We especially enjoy placinte made with brinza, the traditional cheese usually produced from sheep’s milk, similar to crumbled Greek feta cheese.

I’m writing “placinte” in the plural form because it’s nearly impossible to eat only one placinta.

Some Moldovans make round placinte, like thick pancakes. Others swirl them into into spirals or pat them into triangles. On Sunday, Champa learned how to roll them into a shape like breadsticks.

She had two great teachers: Natalia, an adult niece of our host family, and Bunica, our 86-year-old host grandmother who is such a beloved part of our lives here.

The recipe was simple: Combine the brinza cheese with some eggs, dill and salt. Roll out pastry dough on a towel in the shape of a rectangle, Place the cheese mixture along one end of the rectangle. Gently lift the towel under the cheese side of the rectangle and roll the dough in the opposite direction, forming a long tube. Place the tubes on a greased pan, seam sides down, and bake at medium heat for about 40 minutes.

At the bottom of this post is a video of Bunica showing the rolling process. When she says “Gata” at the end, it means “Ready!” My own job came after the placinte emerged from the oven, tasting them to see whether they were even more delicious than the placinte we buy in local stores.

They were. We ate most of them fresh out of the oven. Mmm. Placinte!

If you’re feeling inspired and/or hungry after reading this, you can easily find several YouTube videos showing how to make placinte yourself. When they come out of your oven, don’t forget to say, “Gata!”

On Friday, the U.S. ambassador and other guests celebrated the new costumes Champa and her Ialoveni school partners created over the past several months — a colorful and emotional day we will never forget. This video is also on YouTube.

Three Ialoveni girls took second prize nationally in the 2018 Diamond Challenge Moldova competition for young entrepreneurs. I mentored the team, which produced a Facebook site to help teenagers learn about careers. The video is also on YouTube.

Student teams from across Moldova battle with “SumoBots” they built and programmed. Our Ialoveni library team participated in this educational competition at Tekwill in Chișinău. The video is also viewable on YouTube.

Thanks for reading this blog, which follows the journey of Champa and David Jarmul since we walked away from our conventional life in mid-2015 to pursue a new "not exactly retired" life of service and adventure. It begins with our trips across the United States and Nepal, followed by our current service as Peace Corps volunteers in Moldova, in eastern Europe. We hope you enjoy "Not Exactly," no matter your own age or where you live. Click "About" to learn more.